Pioneering "Experimental Heroes" of Turkish Cinema

While the narrative tradition, which has been developing for thousands of years, can be examined by dividing it into three parts as Drama, Lyricos and Epos, since the discovery of cinematography 127 years ago, narrative in cinema has developed narratives parallel to the two most basic theories of cinema, Realistic Film Theory and Formalist Film Theory, as well as contributing to experimental, feminist, etc. narratives in addition to these theories. The main purpose of this article is to examine three different pioneering films and heroes of Turkish Cinema (Umut-Yılmaz Güney-hero: Cabbar, Anayurt Oteli-Ömer Kavur-hero: Zebercet, Uzak-Nuri Bilge Ceylan-hero: Mahmut), which were shot in a realistic theme, and to reveal how they developed their heroes and what kind of experience they offered to the audience with the heroes they presented, starting from the literary narrative genre Epos. Based on the concept of objectivity, the presentations of the heroes were examined by using the cinema's own language and forms with the cooperation of the screenwriter-director.


Introduction
Since humankind began to think about himself/herself and the world she/he lives in, he/she has been looking for ways to express his/her dilemmas and conflicts, and the narrative tradition has continued to develop for thousands of years with 3 different ways as Drama, Epos and Lyricos.
Unlike other types of narratives, Epos stands out as a narrative tradition that makes possible the courage of human beings to face themselves.In Epos, the experimental hero grasps in the dark in the course of events in his historicity.(Aslanyürek, 1998) Unlike all narrative types that proceed with the main conflict and side conflicts, the actions of the Epos hero are lost in the historicity that he lives in and in the concrete negativities of the historicity, no matter how much he tries to overcome the conflicts and obstacles (time, place, concrete situations, and conflicts created by all these).Ultimately, the severity of our conflicts is proportional to the timeperiod and geography we live in, how much we are compatible or incompatible with them, both inside and outside the political and sociological atmosphere (Köksal, 2018, p.362).The films, which were realized in a realistic way and continued this tradition with different evolutions, formed the development and achievements of Turkish cinema.In this sense, when we examine the directors and films that started with pioneering directors such as Ömer Lütfi Akad (Gelin, Düğün, Diyet), Metin Erksan ((Susuz Yaz, Yılanların Öcü etc.), continued with Yılmaz Güney and his successors, and contributed to the realistic theme with different thematic evolutions with Nuri Bilge Ceylan and his generation, how many heroes do we have in our Turkish cinema who have been created in the courage to face their own existence and life and who have made a great impact?The aim of this study is to focus on the rare "Epos" heroes of Turkish cinema who have the courage to face their own existence and time in the course of 100 years of its history and to evaluate the changing social, sociological and socio-psychological data of Turkey in the background (Köksal, 2018, p.362).
"In addition to the troubles and pains of the age we live in, we have to bear with the social and political relations of our age, which are the result of the old and outdated modes of production, and also a lot of the pain and suffering of yesterday's legacy.We suffer not only from the living, but from the dead."(Karl Marx Capital volume 1 Preface of the German edition) Umut (Hope) -Yilmaz Güney -1966 "Umut" is the turning point of Turkish Cinema as well as Yılmaz Güney 1 's cinema.It really is a "hopeful" (umutlu in Turkish) beginning.(Algan, 2011).The hero of the film, Cabbar, is a poor horse cab driver in Adana.He lives with his wife, five children and elderly mother in a hovel, in fact, they live in the courtyard because of the hot climate of Adana.Cabbar tries to makes things better.His single hope is in the lottery tickets, which he continuously buys.Very poor people have no other solution, and neither does he.Disasters come one after another...One day, a luxury car crashes into his horse cab, killing Cabbar's horse.This loss becomes an irreversible turning point in Cabbar's life, and after that Cabbar's poverty and desperation becomes more difficult, a kind of madness as a social prototype, a madness like thousands of Cabbars who live the same historicity.(Algan, 2011).
Yılmaz Güney states that he created the movie "Umut" based on his father's own life story.
He also worked as a horse cab driver for a while.His father, just like Cabbar, brings an old man home one day and together they dig all the house in search of treasure.(Köksal, 2018, p.363).
To a question about the ban of the film "Umut", Güney replies: "The film was called an enemy of the state...But this film was self-vital for me.When I was a kid, my father also went on a treasure hunt, and I myself was a horse cab driver for a while."(Dorsay, 2005, page.339).
While he was in prison in 1976, he expressed his feelings in a letter he wrote to a close friend upon the death of his father: "My father's death shook me far beyond my expectations.This shock had the effect to make something better, something that was about to fall apart...I don't have a father anymore.I don't have a father anymore, whom I never recognized the value of.I will try to be worthy of my father, to be worthy of millions of poor people like him.I can't take a single step for myself anymore."(Soner, 2005, p. 19).
Born in 1937 in the Yenice district of Adana as the son of a poor agricultural worker from Urfa and a mother from Muş (member of the Cibiran tribe), Güney moved to Adana with his family at the age of 11 after his childhood years he worked as a laborer, vineyard keeper and cotton picker in his village.Güney completed his primary, secondary and high school education in Adana.
While he was a student at the Faculty of Economics in Istanbul, he was imprisoned for nearly two years for his story "Equations with 3 Strangers".
On the other hand, Cabbar, the main protagonist of this film, which was made in Adana, one of the critical places of Turkey's rapid evolution from agricultural order to industrialization and capitalist mode of production, deeply experiences the sharpness of the social structure and class discrimination of his time (1960s).Cabbar, is a poor peasant who takes his pistol and a few pieces of his belongings and migrates from country to town (Köksal, 2018, p.364).He lives in a terrible and ruined house with his wife, children and elderly mother, and tries to earn his family's livelihood as a horse cab driver, which is not a good job.Those who have money prefer taxis, while poor people from the agricultural sector, who comes to the town to have a new life, bargain to get on the horse cab.His single hope is in the lottery tickets.But the his chance is one in a million.This pursuit always ends in despair.
When he goes to ask for money from the lord of the village who is enjoying himself in his villa with swimming pool (Köksal, 2018, p.363), this scene shows the collapse of feudalism and the process of the aghas being integrated into the new order (capitalist model of production).
On the other hand, Yılmaz Güney, the handsome actor of avant-garde films that gave him great fame in Yeşilçam cinema, was able to make a sharp turn towards social realist cinema without losing anything from this acting charm, and moreover by adding an extraordinary warmth to his role (Algan, 2011).has similarities with its hero, Antonia Ricci.After the Second World War, Ricci does the only job he can find, hanging posters in a poor panorama of Rome, which is devastated and ruined with poor economic conditions, and unemployment is high.He takes his bike in pawn and hangs up posters with the enthusiasm of finally finding a job.However, his bicycle is stolen.In the film's two-day story, which has a slow narrative, his search for his bicycle on the streets of Rome constitutes the majority of the film's time.The leading role is Rome, in its "Historicity" rather than Ricci.As a method of reflecting reality, Güney also points his camera at his hero with a very objective approach.He is completely far from Aristotle's formula of dramatic structure.He never uses the terms "identification" 2 and "catharsis" 3 in the film's narrative.Cabbar is an ordinary poor and has no property in a country that has begun to evolve from a feudal order to capitalism.(Köksal, 2018, p.364).
While Güney presents all of Cabbar's tragedy to the audience, he does not present an emotionless world, but he is extremely cautious in emotion-management.What is essential is the brutal drift of the likes of Cabbar in the process of drastic social change.The audience is invited to witness this historical process with many scenes such as; the streets of Adana, the house of Cabbar and his family in a very bad condition, the weapon that was forced to be pawned (which is a symbol of masculinity and feudal structure), the horse killed by a luxury car, the demanding justice at the police station and almost becoming guilty because of class realities, the class scene showing how his children are in an unfair situation at the beginning of their education process (it seems like an indication that the future is hopeless for the next generation), .In the case of desperate deprivation, Cabbar first digs the garden of his house and searches for treasure under the influence of his friend (Tuncel Kurtiz).Afterwards, he goes on a relentless search for a treasure on the banks of the Ceyhan River, with an uncertain end.The ending of the film is open-ended.Yılmaz Güney ends the film with a clear ending that will continue in the minds of the viewers all their lives in order to think and evaluate the problematics of the film (Köksal, 2018, p.364).
The story of Cabbar, the hero of the film, does not end with a fatal tragedy, although it is without a way out.At the end of the film, Cabbar, who returns desperately with his eyes closed, is engraved in our memories as a perfectly created Epos hero as the hero of one of the most impressive last scenes of Turkish Cinema as well as world cinema, and somewhere the lives of people like Cabbar will continue to disturb us and engrave our hearts.The open-ended end turns into an infinite mental inquiry (Köksal, 2018, p.364).
The story of Cabbar, the hero of the film, does not end with a fatal tragedy, although it is without a way out.At the end of the film, Cabbar, who returns desperately with his eyes closed, is engraved in our memories as a perfectly created Epos hero as the hero of one of the most impressive last scenes of Turkish Cinema as well as world cinema, and somewhere the lives of people like Cabbar  (Köksal, 2018, p.362-363).
Anayurt Oteli is a 1986 film of Ömer Kavur about the period in 1980 and after (military coup), which stands out with the strong atmosphere it creates, and in which the hero named Zebercet is the determining character, adapted from Yusuf Atılgan's book of the same name.
In the film, which tells the story of Zebercet, who runs a hotel of a paternal mansion in the town, and the terrifying story that ends in suicide, the town turns into a true film hero who creates Zebercet's desperateness and his nightmare.Anayurt Otel is a film of perversion, communication difficulties, morbid introversion, morbid love, loneliness, murder and suicide.The dark, lonely and terrifying streets of the town, the parades, the marketplaces where there are public prayers, the municipal announcements shouting out loudspeakers, the male spaces, the cockfights, the town cinemas showing action movies, the strange human relations, are some of the many details that make the film unforgettable.Anayurt Otel is one of the most successful atmospheric films of Turkish cinema and in this film, one of the most extraordinary works of Turkish literature, is filmed in a very creative and rich cinematic language (Algan, 2010).
The hero of the film, Zebercet, is the last surviving member of the big family named Keçeciler, the landlord of the Aegean.They lost their lands, the family's mansion house was converted into the Anayurt Hotel, and Zebercet started to run this hotel alone after the death of his father.
Zebercet's date of birth is 1950, the beginning of the years when Turkey changed its axis economically and politically.Zebercet was born prematurely (Köksal, 2018, p.365).The whole life of Zebercet, which literally means gemstone, is like a metaphor of the Republic of Turkey and its people after 1950, like the meaning of his name.He is in line to become a gemstone, a valuable individual, but he has been unimproved.
Zebercet is the son who will continue the family, his mother gave birth at a late age, at the age of 44, after 4 miscarriages.However, just as he was not satisfied with her mother's womb, hhe was born prematurely and unprepared, and he could not get enough of her mother's love, and he lost her mother in 1960.1960 was the year of the first military coup of the Republic of Turkey.In the same year, the year his mother died, Zebercet was circumcised.Circumcision is one of the first important turning points of the manhood ritual of the Republic of Turkey, most of which is Muslim.
However, Zebercet will continue its adventure of manhood deprived of love and affection represented by the mother figure (Köksal, 2018, p.365).
Zebercet, who left secondary school and started his military service after wandering idly for a while and was discharged in 1971.He completed his military service, which was one of the most important stages of being a man, in 1971 during the second military coup times.After his father died, he had been the manager of this hotel since 1980.The death of his father and his assumption of the task of managing the "Anayurt Hotel", the last remaining antiquated fortress of power, coincides with the date of 1980, the 3rd military coup of our Republic.However, the mansion "Anayurt Oteli", which is in great contrast with its name, is far beyond being a warm home for Zebercet.Ömer Kavur's camera wanders in a great void in the gloomy, ramshackle walls of the gigantic mansion.Like the mansion, which is far beyond being a warm home for those who stay and leave, the last owner and manager of the mansion, Zebercet, is extremely far from hospitality and communication (Köksal, 2018, p.365).
We never identify with our main here who is at the center of the film throughout the film.On the contrary, we keep our hero at a distance, while wandering around the corridors of his really cold, ice-cold gloomy world by Kavur's camera.We witness Zebercet's alienation 4 from his own life and from the Anayurt Hotel, which is not a mother land for him and which symbolizes this historicity in which he lived, his desolation, his lovelessness, his loneliness, his unhappiness, his depression, and the process that will gradually lead to his suicide.This witness isa "Thought"centered witness that is completely free from emotion (Köksal, 2018, p.365).This distance is provided by the shooting scales chosen by the director, the general shots he uses very intensively and the objective expression.
Zebercet's "premature birth may have taken place in room 1's bed, and we witness his unsatisfied sex life in the same room.The nameless and mysterious woman who came with the delayed Ankara train and stayed in the same room in the same bed, is like a symbol of the values that Zebercet cannot unite with.She is modern, westerner, beautiful and warm", (Köksal, 2018, p.364) is compassionate, as if it is libertarian.Perhaps she is a symbol of the "democracy" that the Republic of Turkey has never been able to achieve.
However, this bed and room, which Zebercet dreams of uniting with his platonic love, turns into a bitter confrontation of his disappointments, the mother's womb he cannot get enough of, the loss of his mother, his terrible life, his manhood, his vital traumas intertwined with the traumas of the country, and he could not find an exit, and he ended his life in the same bed and room.Thus, this "bed" in room 1 appears in the film as the place of the womb that he cannot get enough of, the mysterious love that he cannot unite with, his dreams and disappointment, his unsatisfied sexual The film itself transforms from the world of basic meanings and a metonymy transmission to the world of side meanings and metaphor (Köksal, 2018, p.365-366).Syntagmatic link is a link between elements that are together at the same time (in presentia).Associative link, on the other hand, connects elements that are not together at the same time (in ansentia) in a powerful memory sequence.According to Jakobson, discourse develops in two directions.It is chosen through similarity or contiguity from one subject to another.Metophor takes place when passed through similarity, and metonymy takes place when passed through agglutination.(Büker, 1996, p.215)While the Anayurt Hotel, as a filmic place, turns into the representation of Turkey, that is, our homeland, the inability to embrace its citizens like a mother, the inability to show a mother's affection, a monstrous masculine power that almost ends by tearing itself apart, where the feminine power is lacking, Zebercet, on the other hand, turns into a metaphor for the deprivations of our republic, patriarchal culture and society, from the harsh fluctuations in the transformation process of our country's people from the feudal order to the capitalist mode of production after 1960, the changes in Turkey that changed the axis."(Köksal, 2018, p.366).
This abstraction of the film pushes the viewer to ask different questions and produce multiple meanings.The dates mentioned by Zebercet are also the breaking points of Turkey's history.These breaking points, which remained unresolved, have also weakened the individual's connection with the space and time in which he lives and the identity that will be shaped by it.Zebercet, who had never met anyone with the same name, existed as if he did not exist.At the end of the film, he tells those who ask that his name is Ahmet and that the place where he lives is a mansion.This is actually a desire to acquire and begin over an identity that can be touched, felt, and lived.But time has passed.That woman, who looks like his mother who died in 1960, will not come, and this time will not be able to live again and Zebercet will commit suicide without a way out in this hotel that he has been running since 1980.From this moment on, the wall clock begins to work, water drips from the tap (Kanbur, 2008).
Kavur's cinematography, camera scales and movements approach the hero and the atmosphere he is in (filmic space and time) with a directing approach that is as far as possible, completely far from the concept of identification, and even closer to the concept of alienation 5 .
Together with Zebercet, Anayurt Hotel itself is the hero of the film.Kavur's camera sometimes approaches the hero and his place, but he always wanders independently in the space after the "TRACES" of the story he tells.This understanding of directing allows the audience to "think" as much as possible, to "complete the created work by thinking about the film itself".(Baseline) Nuri Bilge Ceylan's 2002 film "Uzak", written and directed by him, depicts the forced reunion and inner tensions of two related men belonging to different social segments in a house in the city.In the film, with the images of Istanbul under the snow, the motion behind the stationary is reflected by remaining faithful to the chaos of the inner worlds, the sense of 'naturalness' and 'reality' (Köksal, 2018, p.366).
Ceylan turned to the relationship he established with the family and close circle of the director who came to his town to shoot his second feature film "Mayıs Sıkıntısı/Couds of May", and opened a window towards the theme of the film "Uzak".The theme starting from Uzak and continuing with Mayıs Sıkıntısı, is the relationship or tension between Muzaffer, an urban and selfish director who can look at every phenomenon as material to realize his film, and Saffet, an unemployed young man townsman (Köksal, 2018, p.366).While this tension forms mostly one of the details of the Mayıs Sıkıntısı film, in Uzak this tension forms the main theme of the film.
This contradiction brings forward the deep social segregation in Turkey in recent years and is a strong indicator in the context of the main change that Turkish society is going through.Whereas; Since the 1980s, with the change of economic and social relations, a new type of urban intellectual has emerged in Turkey.With the domination of the neo-liberalist worldview in Turkey, this new intellectual feels completely different and superior in the social sense, but he puts all his mental creativity completely at the service of capitalism in practical life.Ostensibly, this new type of intellectual is an independent and free individual, but he uses this illusion of freedom to serve the demands of capital.Journalists, propagandists, advertisers, photographers, company managers, public relations specialists are the shining professions of the global era and the position we have tried to define above (Köksal, 2018, p.366).
Throughout the 1980s, these professions rose as the most popular positions of the "new free individual."Within all this period, these people, with complete confidence that they were free, "sold" all their personal talents.Mahmut also is one of them.He is an advertising photographer.
He uses all his existing aesthetic accumulation directly to sell goods (to make his products look attractive, he uses good lighting, shooting angles, etc., to sell them well), thus directly serving the rules of the neo-liberal world.. Once upon a time, he wanted to make films like "Tarkovsky", but he has already lost his soul...He has no energy left to think artistically.Mahmut has lost many human character traits.Even though he knows about his mother's illness, he doesn't even call her...He made his ex-wife suffer.He still continues to make the woman, he is with only for sexual intercourse, suffer with his heartlessness.(Algan, 2010).He treats Yusuf, who has come his home for a very vital reason, to look for work, as if he was a troublemaker.He does not talk with him and he never thought of helping him.He even treats him like a potential thief.Yusuf is the victim character of the film.The real loser of the film (Köksal, 2018, p.366-367).
Young, and hungry for knowledge and hope.Like every young person, he is fragile, dreamer and needs help.Open to communication and learning...However, every attempt of Yusuf fails.
He secretly calls his mother from Mahmut's house and takes care of her health.But there is almost no possibility to change his life, to find a job.Like millions of people in Turkey today.Just as the direction Mahmut and Yusuf look at is different, their dreams are also different...One of them wants everything to be destroyed with an earthquake, the other one wants small distant lights, little bell sounds...The big difference in these two dream scenes shows that the director has a clear attitude deep down in his hearth about whose soul is purer and more innocent.(Algan, 2010).
On the other hand, the togetherness of these two characters, who represent different social and cultural layers, is of particular importance for our cinema.By comparing the hero Mahmut with the identity of the other hero Yusuf, Nuri Bilge Ceylan makes us clearly understand this amorphous, essentially alienated intellectual character who grew up with Turkey's capitulation to neo-liberal economies after the 1980 military coup through the tensions and conflicts between the two.
Since the eighties, there has been a period in which the lifestyles and choices of the "Mahmuts" were approved and glorified, while the "other" represented by Yusuf was constantly humiliated, just as he did to Mahmut in the film, there was a shift in direction in which the humiliation turned into the eyes of the director.The cinema of that period was a cinema that pushed us to a neo-liberal understanding of life and destroyed the social perception.It was giving us the ideology that it is a privilege to live individualist, selfish, hedonistic, material and integrated with the system.Uzak Film is a breaking point in terms of being the first critical perspective directed at this segment, which this period glorified.(Algan, 2010).
The film ends with the viewer leaving a deep sense of pity for Yusuf.In the last scene of the film, we see the other hero, Mahmut, sitting alone in the park, with a meaningless sense of emptiness and nothingness.His life has failed, he has moved away from his dreams, he has hurt women, and he continues to hurt... Deprived of the ability to do good, to understand and help a person, he is lonely and unhappy (Köksal, 2018, p.367).
Nuri Bilge Ceylan breaks down the concept of completely identifying with the hero Mahmut in the film "Uzak".Throughout the film, we never identify with Mahmut.He uses an objective camera generally with the general ghots or the medium general shots.A film atmosphere dominated by loneliness, unhappiness and alienation has been created.The general colors of the film include chrome and cool white tones."Uzak" Film is an intertwined film with its thematic structure.The main hero "Mahmut", in a sense, is the representative of intellectuals in many similar countries in the process of harsh capitalization, while the other hero "Yusuf" is the representative of the unemployed youth of other similar countries who come from the rural places to the city to find a job, food and life, but have not yet lost their human identity, but will be the losers of this new order.Thus, the film turns into a universal story from the snowy Istanbul 2002 winter.It sits on a strong axis of historicity and causality.This upheaval, this social collapse in Turkey is very universal...Many films that we have watched from around the world in recent years directly or indirectly describe problems such as urban life, loneliness, the rapid increase in the number of

Conclusion
It has been seen in the above study that three pioneering films and heroes of Turkish Cinema (Umut-Yılmaz Güney-hero: Cabbar, Anayurt Oteli-Ömer Kavur-hero: Zebercet, Uzak-Nuri Bilge Ceylan-hero: Mahmu), based on the literary narrative genre Epos, positioned their heroes within the concepts of time, place, historicity and causality in which they are, presented them to the audience with the "objectivity" approach of realistic cinema, and the films were finished with open-ended endings, they have been able to create never-ending question marks in the minds of the viewers and the next generation of viewers, thus creating a cinematic language centered on "thinking".For a "thinking" centered cinema, they chose the dominance of general plans, the use of an objective camera that can get closer and move away from the heroes and their locations, and sometimes navigate independently, they also supported these preferences in the use of color and texture.
desperate young people."Uzak" becomes a world film by sensitively reflecting the projection of this vital problem in Turkey.